Friday, August 29, 2008

With a name like "Blake Lively", you have very limited career choices: singer, actress, talk show host, fashion designer, toy dog salesperson, stripper, porn star--that's about it. Well, it just so happens she stars on the show Gossip Girl and, as a result, is a gossip column target. Oh, the irony.

Well, it looks as if the absentminded young star (if you can call someone on a CW show that) allegedly forgot her pants the other day, in midtown Manhattan no less. Or maybe that's not a man's dress shirt and actually a dress? Regardless, this is the pretend "oops, I can't believe my undergarments are showing!" photo op that's so popular in Hollywood nowadays. Not that I'm complaining.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Billed "Camouflage" by the Galerie Bertin-Toublanc, this exposition by Liu Boulin takes subjects, paints them and then turns them into part of the scenery. Although I personally prefer body-painting when it involvesbarely-legal, barely-clothedwomen (all preceding images probably NSFW), but I can truly appreciate the art here.

My favorites are the "ghost" images. I find them hauntingly cool

However, most of these pictures are worthy of your attention. This "Fake Mao" is pretty fucking cool too

If I had an attention span that was longer than a fruit fly's, I may attempt something like this (honestly, I'm not an artist, but I like the idea of messing with perception). But, alas, I've already forgotten what we were talking about. USA! USA!

Friday, August 22, 2008

I've hit a blog wall. From day to day, I'm not sure what to blog about. I've got blogger's blogk. I'm suffering from blogspot dysfunction.

I could see if it was because I've had a busy summer, but that's not the case. I don't feel like I did anything constructive, interesting or groundbreaking, and now with August almost over and I feel like I should have been lounging on the beach sipping mai tais for the last few weekends. There's no time like the present, right?

Anyway, why not go to the old fallback position: THINGS I HATE! This time it's a special SPORTS EDITION. Here we go!

The FedEx Cup. This thing is so pointless, I can't even begin to tell you. It's "the playoffs" of golf according to those who started this points system thing, but judging by the sparse crowds at the Barclays in NJ this week no one's buying into it. So who is the #1 point getter? Why it's TIGER WOODS, who has been out for the past 2 months due to knee surgery. Okay, so let's ignore that minor oversight, and instead focus on #2 in line to win this pointless award. It's got to be Padraig Harrington, who won two majors (PGA and The Open), right? Nope, he's astonishingly down at #4, behind FIGJAM! You'll never guess who is the leader: KENNY PERRY. I could not name one tournament I've seen him play in this year, and I watch most of them. To add to this absurdity, all Hunter Mahan had to do to go from #37 to a "projected #1" is shoot a 62 yesterday. Nice try, FedEx, but how about you focus on delivering packages instead of a silly golf playoff format that that no one cares about.

Chris "Mad Dog" Russo. For the past 19 years, New York sports fans have had to put up with this sports radio personality, and his egocentric partner on the "Mike (Francesser) and the Mad Dog" show on WFAN, until he called it quits last week. During his tenure this buffoon is a San Francisco Giants fan and has OPENLY ROOTED AGAINST NEW YORK TEAMS including the Yankees and Mets, and he couldn't give a crap about the Giants or Jets. He knows (and talks) more about tennis and Springsteen than football, hockey, horse racing and basketball combined. How he has amassed a fortune in sports radio is beyond my comprehension. Now he's moving to Sirius XM radio to ply his unfathomable trade. God, I just wish this guy would choke on his own bile.

NBC Sports interrupting sporting events. They're already on my shit list for their hockey coverage (and their sports coverage in general) but they've now hit a new low. I honestly haven't watched much of their insufferable Olympics coverage (except the last 3 Michael Phelps races, which were all irritatingly hyped by an on-screen "Phelps countdown"). Part of the reason I haven't watched is that the vast majority of their events have been on tape delay, so you would think they would show the live events in their entirety since they are so few and far between, right? Alas, that's not the case. On Friday night, they interrupted a mens swim relay to show a commercial, right in the middle of the race, TWICE. NBC, you monumentally suck at broadcasting sports.

Brett Fucking Favre. I don't care, ESPN. I don't care, New York media. I don't care about Brett Favre, where he's going, where he's been, who he's text messaging, what photo op he's attending. I DON'T CARE. Furthermore, despite the giddy excitement by their fans the New York Jets Bretts were NOT one player away from the playoffs, and certainly not a 38 year old QB away. Yes, he will be able to throw those 65 yard bomb interceptions that Chad Paperthin could only dream about. Congratulations to the Jets management for finding a way to sell more jerseys, ones that will look pretty silly in about 18 months or so when he re-retires. Thanks to the media, however, for showing him for what he really is: a selfish player who just wants attention. Well, you will be showered with it in New York, especially negative comments when you fail to make the postseason.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

During my stay in Bretagne, I had the opportunity to taste a couple of different beers that'd I'd never tasted before (and some apple cider and pear cider too).

Most of my beer tasting was from one brewery, the Brasserie de Bretagne (simply: The Brittany Brewery). I tried their blonde (pilsner*), white/wheat/blanc, and this interesting amber beer made with "blé noir" (black wheat or buckwheat as we Americans say). I'm not sure if they keep all the wheat out of it, but I know that there are US breweries making beer for a "gluten-free lifestyle" (including one in lovely Ramapo, NY).

In any case, here's how it happened. I bought a mixed 6 pack of wheat and buckwheat from Brassiere de Bretagne. I tasted the wheat beer, which was fine and then I happened to have Gwiniz Du in a bar. It was weird and I didn't like it the first time I tried it - too different from other beer, my brain couldn't wrap itself around the beer. I packed the 3-pack up and brought it home and tried it again and i liked it the second (third and fourth) time(s). I'm not sure if 1) I got a bad bottle in the bar, 2) the chilling, then unchilling then rechilling of the beer made it good or 3) it's an acquired taste and now I like it after having (so to speak) lost my buckwheat virginity.

The beer is quite sour, with a weird sweet/sour finish. It's very complex with many flavors that my palate is unable to distinguish. Overall, I'm fairly impressed, for a French beer this one is pretty high on my list. The French in general make bland Bud-like pilsners that are fine if you're slamming a thirty-pack at the beach, but not something that my beer-snob psyche really likes to be seen drinking - between Heini and the French macros, I always take Heini, if that tells you anything.

As heavy as this beer is (5.4 abv, dark amber color), it actually works in mildly hot weather. It doesn't stick around in your mouth for too long and leaves it feeling more-or-less fresh (although there is a prevailing sour taste, even a few moments the beer is gone) One last point for Gwiniz Du, it survived the aforementioned skunky test. It was in a fridge for 3 days, then spent a full day in the sun in the back of the car, then two days at room-temperature then got put back in the fridge. And it doesn't taste like shit now. That earns it a couple of merit badges in my book. It also took gold at the Paris General Agricultural Fair in 2006 (edit: 2008 as well). That may seem like a laugh, but they take their agriculture very seriously here.

If you find it (you probably won't if you don't go to a beer fest and/or Brittany), pick up a bottle, just for the hell of it. If not, try one of Brasserie de Bretagne's other offerings. It's something different.

*Fuck Mozilla for not including "pilsner" in their default American-English spell-check dictionary.

Been a while since I've posted, but that's because I was drinking and carrying on up in Brittany on holiday. There a couple of pieces of hate and one of unparalleled loved that I want to throw out:

1. That fucking Coldplay song does not get better with time, it just keeps getting worse. Who said, "yeah, synthesized violins*, that'd be a great idea?" On top of that, Julie told me the other day that she "liked that song." I went as far as searching "avocats de divorce" in the French Yellow Pages, but figured I'll give her one more single off the new album to change her mind.

*I know they're probably "real" violins, but it doesn't make the song any less sucky.

2. The Olympics are in full swing and that means of course that French TV has been avoiding US mens basketball and all of Michael Phelps races for women's handball and men's fencing. For the most part I just ignore the asshole announcers as they toss the salad of 3rd rate French athletes, but I can not avoid them in the track and field events. They have this fat fuck with a lazy eye who has some weird hate for the Americans. Since there are no French athletes in any of the "real" track events (silver in the 3000m steeplechase! WOW!), this fuck spends his time attacking the Americans. Jamaica has kicked ass sprinting this year. As opposed to taking time to admire Usian Bolt's absolute dominance in the 100m, Mr. Lazy Eye instead had to talk about how he "beat down" the Americans..."Hey dickwad, where are your tricolore sprinters...yeah, that's what I thought, shut up now!"

3. It's the time of year where I have to renew my residency card here in France. I should, allegedly, be issued a card for 10 years now, which will mean less hassles with the administration. I have the list of papers that I need to provide. Most are black-and-white: Copy of passport, ID photographs and then I come to "Any document that can prove your integration into French society...such as proof of a social life." Hmm, I have a lot of receipts from bars. I don't think that's what they're looking for. As soon as you give a civil servant the power to "interpret" the validity of documents the system goes to hell.

4. Just a quick cargasm. I know that they used a Ferrari 250 GT California in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but that was a movie (and I think the car was a replica too...), so you rarely see "actual" examples of them and this black one is just freaking beautiful. As soon as I have $4 million in disposable cash, I'm getting one (of course if when that happens, inflation will have made these cars worth 2x or 3x that.) [via Autoblog: more car porn at that link].

I'm not sure this will really help, because although drinking is a huge part of the culture, most of the problems stem from driving. So here's my counterproposal: lower the drinking age to 18, raise the driving age to 22, and make alcohol/beer advertisements on television illegal. Also, liquor stores should scan every ID to ensure that those under 21 can only buy 1 case of beer or 1 bottle of hard alcohol a day. Colleges and universities should also offer transportation in the form of some sort of . . . light rail?

However, the best thing about this debate is the multitude of pictures of drunken debauchery that are being included with the articles on the internet. Here's a breakdown of each site and what visual they chose:

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Over on the Exclamation Point'sFake Hockey Blog Page, Greg "Puck Daddy" Wyshynski had a bunch of complete nobodies write about the 5 Ways they'd change the NHL. However, this is the definitive list because it was written by me. Most of them have to do with increasing scoring chances and focusing on skill without ruining the game as it's been played for the last 50 years.

1. Make the goalie pads smaller. I'm sick of people saying that the nets should be bigger. That's horseshit, because it completely changes the game to where you can't compare scoring records to those that came before. Instead, go back to what the goalies wore back in the early 80s, as evidenced by this Bill Ranford photo.

(And get rid of the trapezoid, which is totally useless. It also sounds stupid, making even the best play-by-play guy sound like he's giving a geometry lesson.)

2. Get rid of the shootout. It was an amusing and often enjoyable novelty at first, but now it's turned into a supremely crappy way to end games. Because the point is more important than the spectacle, none of the players take a chance and show off their skill. Now all they do is skate straight in, shoot it right on net, and 90% of the time get stuffed. This is my solution: play a 10 minute OT period 4-on-4, and then 5 minutes 3-on-3. If the fans aren't happy with a tie after that, there's no pleasing them and they should watch arena football instead.

3. Remove fighting. There's no need for it any more. If you want to increase scoring and skill in the league, how about getting rid of the skaters who never shoot the puck? Send all the goons to Russia, I hear they have a league or something over there.

4. Switch the home and away benches. We've mentioned this on the blog before, but this way the defense has a greater distance to change during the 1st and 3rd periods. This works great for us traditionalists, because it will increase scoring without changing the fundamentals of the game, just the strategy regarding shift changes.

5. Change these three rules:* Remove the nebulous "distinct kicking motion" rule; if the puck hits the offensive player's skate anywhere, with intent or not, it's not a goal.* Players may only use wooden sticks. Those crappy composite sticks that explode just when someone's about to unleash a slapshot suck.* Don't give a 2 minute delay of game penalty when the puck is accidentally sent over the glass. Just make the faceoff in the team's zone, and don't allow them to make a personnel change, or talk to one another, or smile.

6. Get rid of Gary Fucking Bettman. Yeah I know, this is a bonus, but it needs to be said constantly.

Friday, August 8, 2008

The summer Olympics began today, and I'm going to be honest: I don't really like the summer Olympics. Some of the major track and field events are exciting, but everything else (especially the gymnastics, which they force feed the US viewers) is just dull to me. This year, because it's in the horribly overcrowded and polluted city of Beijing, China all the events are 12 hours ahead, so I will know what happens even before NBC Sports screws up the tape delay broadcast of it. Maybe I'll focus on the fringe sports like kayaking, judo, fencing, heptathalon, and shooting (which the USA should win every year, since we're so skilled at shooting each other). Or I could waste time watching our overrated, narcissistic basketball players like Kobe Bryant get beat by Argentina. Nah, I'll just watch golf.

However, I do like female synchronized swimmers. They're not as muscular and butch as their swimming cohorts, since they're sort of doing gymastics in the water and are judged on their appearance and style. Wait a second: who thought doing gymnastics in the water was a good idea?

In synchronized swimming not only are pants hated, they're illegal as sanctioned by the IOC.

Here's the U.S. team. They probably don't have a chance in hell of medaling, but they have photo galleries in Radar, Fitness, and don't they look nice?

Here are the Russian duet swimmers.

Oh my. So THAT'S how it is over there.

Finally, here is the classic video featuring the men's synchronized swimming team, who were hoping to be included in the 1988 Olympics.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The 2008 PGA Championship is finally here! Beginning today, the best of the best have gathered somewhere in Minnesota Michigan compete to win this final major of the season. Oh, the best isn't playing? Let me rephrase: everyone but Tiger will be there! Please watch!

Let's hope this is a quality showcase for the best golfers, because the end of last week's WGC at Firestone was atrocious. Veeger couldn't hit half his putts from 4 to 8 feet, and PHIL! withered on the back 9 bogeying 3 of the last 4 holes to cost him the lead and the tournament. (I'm sure Tiger was watching at home, seething and sinking his fingernails into the sofa, knowing he could have easily taken that title.) But you know what the latter means: the old PHIL is back! But is that a good thing? All I know is that I can relate to a lefty golfer with an erratic driver, but I don't enjoy watching it. (BTW, the nickname "Lefty" is a misnomer, since he's right handed in everything else besides his swing, just like me.)

Regardless, this morning you can't click on a golf website without seeing Mickelson's amiable yet goofy face. There's a lot of talk about whether he can capture another major this Sunday, and here's what they're saying:

Shall I compare Phil to a summer's day?If at first you don't succeed, Phil, Phil again.It is better to have Phil and lost than never to have Phil at all.A Phil in the hand is worth two in the bush.I can accept Phil, but I can't accept not trying.As the purse is emptied, the heart is Phil.Phil like no one is watching.

So what do I say about this? One word: FIGJAM!

Okay, that got silly really fast. All I'm saying is get ready for the PHILATHON this weekend, as the TV coverage is going to be PHILCENTRIC, and occasionally will be absolutely PHILTHY (cover the kids' eyes).

(See? He's not really a southpaw.)

Anyway, here's the lowdown on the 4th and final major of the year, the 90th PGA Tournament at Oakland Hills.

DESCRIPTIONFour Holes will tell the tale at the 2008 PGA Championship. Take a closer look at Nos. 6, 13, 16 and 18, as well as other scenes from Oakland Hills.

"I'm just glad I brought this course, this monster, to its knees," Ben Hogan said after winning the 1951 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills. "I shot a pair of 80s and went home," says Steve Flesch, recalling his quick technical knockout at the 1996 U.S. Open. "It's one of the hardest golf courses I've ever played."

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I know this blog (and 97% of all blogs in the known universe) is really devoted to hate. But I'm going to use this post to spread some love.

I love rollercoasters. My entire family does as well, and after recently completing a trip to Hersheypark where I rode on every single one they had to offer, my love has been restored. I haven't been to an amusement park in about a decade, and I'm amazed at the rides that have been dreamed up (by some crazy Germans, as my dad put it) since that time.

My love affair started with the SooperDooperLooper(1977), the first metal looping coaster on the East Coast, and The Comet (1946), a classic old wooden rollercoaster, both of which I first experienced in the early 80s. Since then, the park has added numerous rollercoasters: Great Bear (1998), a fantastic inverted coaster; Lightning Racers (2000), the world's first racing, wooden coaster featuring two trains ("Lightning" and "Thunder") that race each other to the finish line; the unique suspended water coaster, the Roller Soaker (2002); Storm Runner (2003), a fantastic rocket coaster that takes off from 0 to 72 MPH in 2 seconds and sends you into a dazzling array of loops, barrel rolls and a near-vertical 180' drop.

The latest addition for 2008 is Fahrenheit, a metal coaster that takes you up the initial 121' high hill at a 90° angle, and then promptly plunges you down it at 97°. That's right: if you take out your protractor, you'll see that's 7 degrees beyond straight down. This currently matches the largest angle of descent of any coaster on the planet. It's pretty amazing and exhilarating. Thankfully, there are crazy people out there who are willing to capture this on video, while the rest of us are keeping our hands on the bars and our heads back at all times.

Of the 3 times I went on it, I was lucky enough to experience this from the front row once. This was great to ride at night, as when you look behind you as you're going up the hill you can see the entire park lit up--upside down. It's a little disconcerting to say the least.

While we're spreading the love, I also happen to love chocolate. I won't elaborate on that, but let's just say that they could encase a carburetor in chocolate and I'd eat it. Basically, I can't think of a better place to spend a few days than Hershey, Pennsylvania (but only a few days).